Nobody goes into business long enough without acknowledging the reality of risk. Whether it’s investment, B2B buying, or hiring, every action (and more) has this element of uncertainty, a chance of going off-course.

Although, there are can also be far too many different approaches to this reality. For lead generators, understanding this is important because you want your prospect to experience the feeling of guaranteed safety that makes it easier to win sales.

Latest talks of opening diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States could create new opportunities for certain industries. When you think about it though, B2B marketers don’t necessarily have to create world peace just to see how building bridges can also grant them their own opportunities.

Outsourcing is often touted as not just cost efficient but also a convenient means to increase the reach of your lead generation strategies. All without the heavy expenses of hiring your own marketing teams all the time.

Though no matter how you expand, is lead generation the only process that needs to grow? You could get a campaign that reaches out to hundreds of prospects. But when those prospects show up, how prepared are you to qualify them and arrange meetings with sales? What if you’re only as few as five people on a sales team?

Sometimes a company’s greatest strength is brought out only after certain conditions are met. Sometimes these conditions can have steep costs (e.g. long integration time, expensive consulting etc) and other times, they can really be taxing (e.g. thriving under pressure, tight budgets etc). How can your B2B marketing strategy pitch these conditions without causing more than a few prospects to step back?

Accountability can be hard to define without first establishing a form of contract between two parties. In the case of yourself and your business prospects, an appointment setting campaign could be just the thing.

Willpower. It carries a lot of weight in the business world. From describing an executive’s conviction to the dedication of an employee, they all draw from the concept invoked by this single power word.

And like it or not, B2B marketing and sales constantly have to grapple with the willpower of potential clients in order to survive every quarter. Don’t take it as something personal or ethical. It’s just the nature of the beast.

You could even say it’s a very noble purpose. If people didn’t have their willpower tested, how will you know if it’s strong? Can an executive truly call himself convicted if his decisions weren’t regularly tested by his gut?

Therefore, don’t be ashamed to be the one doing the testing. Regardless of circumstance, even your own marketers have a lot of things they can take away:

It makes you immune to pretense – Prodding around for a subtle, psychological trigger doesn’t necessarily mean you’re emotionally manipulative (or at least to that degree). Alternatively, it can mean you’re good at guessing what people really want versus what they’re saying. Some people wear their desires on their sleeve but not all. Those who don’t are just as manipulative, using lies and facades to tell you that they don’t need your product. These pretenses are a poor substitute for willpower. But more than that, it’s a lesson worth teaching anyone (even your potential clients).

It tests your prospect’s willingness to commit –You also have the other half of the sales-marketing dynamic: lead quality. Lead quality is directly correlated with a prospect’s actions in your sales funnel. Just simply clicking and signing up on a landing page doesn’t always mean a lead is good. A prospect needs to have the right amount of willpower to stick to their buying decision too. And if the psychological tugs are what’s driving their decision, they could risk turning into disillusioned customers that only deliver shor-term value.

It requires you to see through your own tricks – From social media to search engine, prospects today have more access to information and are more likely to guard themselves against any marketing ‘tricks.’ Some call it the invasion of the introverts. Others say it was bound to happen anyways. But in any case, you need to start seeing through your own tricks so you’ll know how you’re going to keep them in the pipeline.

Willpower is not necessarily synonymous with irrational determination. It’s actually a mix of both. When a prospect is firm about their need (or lack of it), they’re logically more inclined to justify it. And if you don’t know how to test their defenses, you’ll both have difficulty trying to convince then and determining if they’ll really be good customers.

Anyone who’s hoped to escape the popularity contests of highschool might be a little disappointed if they ever got a job in B2B marketing. The real challenge though isn’t just the fact that these contest are more intense from competing for high profile corporate attention. It’s also because all that intensity’s just been magnified as online technology throws itself in the mix with offline marketing.

It’s not really the fault of technology that more companies have increased integrating an online marketing approach (whether it’s just adding a page on Facebook or reformatting their email templates for mobile readers). It just sort of happened.